Seattle Schools Community Forum

From SPS Communications: Superintendent Banda made several principal appointments Feb. 7 , including: • George Breland, Cleveland High School ; • Maria Breuder, McGilvra Elementary School ; • Dedy Fauntleroy, John Stanford International School ; • Robert Gary, Madison Middle School ; • Jo Lute-Ervin, Kimball Elementary School ; • Mary McDaniels, Madrona K-8 ; and • Dan Sanger, Bryant Elementary School . I see a couple of principals who seem to rotate every couple of years.  I'll note in reading through the bios that some note that parents and teachers at some schools were part of the selection committee but not at others.  The district seems to be depending on "surveys" but don't say what the survey was specifically about in the first place.  Again, why is that? From Superintendent Banda: I am pleased to announce that Carmen Rahm has been appointed Executive Director of Technology. For the past 10 years, Mr. Rahm has been Assistant Vice President for I...

Surprise from a reader (and I agree) - a figure from a Danny Westneat column. Did this surprise anyone else? 2370 kids, about 5% of all of the students in Seattle Public Schools, are homeless ? I had no idea it was that many. From the Week in Geek :  The physics of the Winter Olympics.  Good piece to show to the kids as you watch some amazing athletes in action.   (Those kids on the snowboards give me a heart attack.)   Heads up on a coming trend in politics - more "school choice" meaning more charters and now the push for vouchers.  This from Non-Profit Quarterly . Most candidates for major local or state positions, particularly governor, scurry to charter schools to be seen as supportive of these vanguards of the school choice movement. Among Republican candidates for office, the message of charter school advocacy seems to be designed to resonate with voters frustrated with the purported inadequate performance of traditional public schools, even ...

The Stranger Slog has a weekly child shooting roundup and hey, one story is local. From Q13: PUYALLUP — Neighbors say they never heard a gunshot, but saw what happened next. “The young man was sitting in the driveway just rocking back and forth saying; I shot my best friend, I shot my best friend ,” neighbor Carol Sharick said. ... Police say five boys were in the house hanging out after school, the boy who lived in the house brought out a shotgun, it was loaded and somehow went off striking the 13-year-old boy in the chest. ... Police and neighbors call the shooting senseless, totally avoidable and a tragedy that did not have to happen. “I don’t understand why people aren’t more secure of their things that they have in their home that are deadly to kids. You see it all the time you’d think the kids would even realize they shouldn’t be playing around with things like that,” Sharick said. Leaving a loaded shotgun where teenage boys congregate?  Why not?  (The...

One Community meeting on Saturday, Director Carr, from 8:30-10 am at Bethany Community Church. It is Neighbor Appreciation Day in Seattle this Saturday the 8th.   Nearly all the Seattle fire stations will be open so it's a good time to take the kids to meet your local firefighters. Superhero ladies re-imagined by artist Celeste Pille.  I like this. Speaking of heroes , GI Joe, the very first action figure, turns 50 this year.  That's okay, Joe, we're all getting older.  The Siemens, We Can Change the World Challenge, is still on until March 4th.  The Siemens We Can Change the World Challenge is the premier national environmental sustainability competition for grades K-12 students. Through project-based learning, students learn about science and conservation while creating solutions that impact their planet. Beginning August 13, 2013 through March 4, 2014, teams from across the country will be challenged to create sustainable, reproducible envi...

 Update: here's what's happening in the white-hot capital of ed reform pushback - Chicago - around testing.  Chicago is just one of many cities in many states caught in this muddle between existing state tests and the coming Common Core assessments.  Why take both?  Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett sent a letter to parents on Wednesday telling them why they should not have their child opt-out of the ISAT and the NWEA/MAP tests, the second time in less than two months she has issued such a letter. In a swift counter-move, parent groups that oppose high-stakes testing said the letters indicate that CPS leaders are worried about a growing resistance to standardized tests, with some parents saying their children spend too much class time on too many tests, with serious consequences tied to their outcome. For the first time, the level of participation in the NWEA/MAP is part of the district's rating system for schools, with schools penalized if participation falls be...

Update:   Here is a link to SPS about the changes to Transportation.  It includes a link to the approved amendment from Director Peters " which shifted bus arrival times back about 10 minutes from the most recent proposal, closer to the bus arrival times for many schools this year. She called the amendment a "compromise" solution that is intended as a one-year solution only."   As well, there is a link for all arrival and departure times for all schools as well as info on other transportation changes.  Want to talk about it to KUOW?  Call Andy Hurst, KUOW producer, ASAP.  They air at noon. Desk: 206.616.7649 Cell: 206.617.3302

I am a bit late on this post but here is the latest. As noted by one reader (I believe Lynn), there is a hastily scheduled Board Work Session on Math Instructional Materials Adoption tomorrow, the 6th from 6-7 p.m.    The agenda has no presentation so I don't know what kind of update it will be. Meanwhile, the next meeting of the Math Adoption Committee is this Friday, the 7th, from 8:30 am to 3pm in the JSCEE Professional Library (I believe that is the second floor).  It is open to the public.  Sorry, no agenda available. I am hearing -more and more- that all has not run smoothly with this Committee.  For example, they had rejected some people at the beginning of the process and then hastily added four more people at the last minute. There were to be three math finalists but now there are four (due to a near-tie for two candidates).   It's interesting because there were three separate public inpubs - community on-line, community in person ...